gabyhinsliff.bsky.social
Guardian columnist & writer, author of Half a Wife, sometimes on telly/Guardian Politics Weekly podcast. No, I didn't write the headline. Event host & speaker https://www.specialistspeakers.com/?p=2705
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hi Cathy. This would be fair if the piece said ppl had lost rights, but it didn't for vg reason: it said they lost 'access', which is a mater of customs & social norm as well as law. Many trans people did get used to being able to use preferred toilets, play grassroots sport; now that is gone.
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who is this mythical 'other' half, who want to see the documents but don't want you to know that they are the sort of informed person who waits to see the documents.
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this is the most middle aged social media site i know and anybody here who says they don't remember it is lying
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it's the Christmas Day special basically
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ps if you no longer have a Twitter account to follow along on, New York Times seems to be doing a live blow by blow account of who is trying to deport/impeach/otherwise finish off whom www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06...
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that was infinitely more dignified than whatever the hell this is
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yes. or musty. like blackberries with a slightly suspicious undertone.
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'imagine a fruit, but it's not quite nice enough to eat, so you make a showergel out of it'
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(for those asking what's going on on Twitter btw, basically if you remember Alexis & Krystle off of Dynasty fighting in the lilypond, it's that but one of them is leader of the free world)
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he's a loss to Reform, and to be fair i think Farage probably knows that, but it was always going to end up here eventually
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see also the Donald Trump Party, judging by events today. Not sure if it's good or bad that rightwing populism's worst enemy turns out to be itself, but at least we now know it has one
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as do we both!
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also just to be able to announce something full stop. A lot of govt has been v pent up for months -until you've got your spending review deal you can't do/say anything because will you be able to deliver? That's contributed i think to sense of lack of direction - sometimes it's actually lack of £
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i'm sorry to hear that but don't give up on us! i have always thought there's a general thing on the left (not just media but people) about not quite being able to take joy in victories like the right does - we're always looking for the catch. It's something I reflect on often.
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i won't defend every headline we ever produce but with FSM it will be over time, that's part of the story, & my guess is most readers will just be thrilled that it feels like something's shifted. Was v striking to hear Bridget Phillipson on air this am, sounding like a load off her shoulders.
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...how govt can afford this now despite having no £ (note some commentators already arguing that hey if they've got £ to spend then maybe Tories didn't leave things in the mess suggested) & how it'll work for families in practice. I think it's great & said so last night, but that's not reporting.
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not really sure quoting the IFS on govt's spending plans (as we always did with previous govt) is shitting all over it? The IFS pt (that transitional protections, to ensure kids don't lose out when family circs change, mean more are already getting FSM that normal) is technical but helps explain...
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there will definitely be an element of that, but need to see the whole child poverty strategy & the final welfare reforms all in the round before it's possible to work out where exactly that leaves us. More announcements to come, I think.
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you'll love it, hard recommend
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in other non-doom loop news (now wondering if i should keep this thread going?) I really liked this, about walking and talking (the only good habit i got out of covid was going for regular walks with friends, when that was the only socialising allowed) www.theguardian.com/global-devel...
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See also ‘Up the stairs to Bedfordshire’
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Yes I’m struggling to accept that it’s June already
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i find it v annoying that what we used to call EDI has overnight become DEI (and it's a tell of people who basically only discovered its existence when Trump did). But it's probably not the worst thing about this idea, so...
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IMHO ‘we don’t want equality, back to the days of inequality’ is a pretty weird place for the Labour Party to end up but hey
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What govt is doing is complicated, though. On the one hand, eg the pay gap reporting measures the piece talks about, & much of Rayner’s rights at work reforms; on the other, eg muted response to EhRC interpretation of Supreme Court ruling, the showdown with Sentencing Council re judicial bias.
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…what this episode is about. That the Greens or the LibDems or the SNP or indeed a lot of the Labour Party eg oppose the cap hasn’t worried govt as much as Reform doing so. That’s hard for progressive voters to take & the intro is a way of presenting exactly that cognitive dissonance.
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Morning Nick! I’d say we are pretty aware at the Guardian of covering the Greens, & I’ve written recently about why we should focus on them more eg among young voters. But when Reform is 9pts ahead of Labour & provoking govt into significant U-turns, we’re going to want to unpick that, which is..
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It would be a non-story if no 10 never listened to them. A useful rule of thumb I think is that if any given lobby is taken in any way seriously within a govt, it’s helpful that we all know what they’re saying (though in this case there’s a pretty enormous pushback in the other direction)
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..came here to avoid. Need to be thoughtful & conscious about not falling back into the same old traps, especially I think as it grows (which was when Twitter first went sour)
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Those exist too & they're lovely, & the culture of this place is encouraging of them I think. But the context to the thread I was responding to was people complaining about being bullied off here/made to feel unwelcome, so important to be aware I think it's not immune to the behaviour a lot of us..
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You’ve literally just made the point! People are the product and also the producer of social media. If it’s (quite often) a miserable place to be, the problem is us. We’re not designed to maintain good social relationships across vast numbers of strangers & we are often not great at it
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the thread was on protected characteristics so we’re talking at cross purposes then - I mentioned class precisely because Labour’s stronger on it & I think it’s key to arguing for the other strands of equality successfully
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ok this conversation has definitely gone in a direction i didn't expect
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bit confused by this as a critique of history teaching though? maybe when Jonathan Sumption was at school, but even for me it wasn't UK-centric, GCSE now is (or was for my kid) yes lots of prewar Germany but also Russia, China & at Alevel it's been more China, American/ French revolution, Tudors...
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i'm all for social mobility stuff being rooted in EY & combining education & equality briefs makes sense for that. But yeah.
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....lot of gaps in broader equalities thinking which (I gather) might get filled in a bit when spending review is settled I can see individual ministers with potential to do interesting things: I can also see some pretty obvious setbacks/holes (as can many others judging by the replies here)
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big fan of renters reform & doubtless scores well on equality impact assessment but you'd have a job passing 'housing reform successive tory govts kept promising & not doing' as a flagship Labour reform illustrating new vision on equalities. & there's good stuff in the emp rights bill but still a...
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I think there are definitely ways of talking about inequality that don't make the red wall twitchy (and class based inequality ought to be a big deal for the trad Labour base). I just don't get the sense anyone's really thought it all through yet